Liz Allen: Teacher's lessons endure

The right condolences can help ease your grief when you lose a loved one.

Mike Schultz got it exactly right when he wrote about Miss Nedra Powell, his first-grade teacher at a one-room schoolhouse in Elk County.

Actually, when she died on March 1 at age 95, Miss Powell had long been Nedra Marie Rooney, an Erie mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, volunteer, world traveler and longtime Grover Cleveland School teacher. The firstborn of eight children, she outlived all her siblings. She lost her husband, Robert Rooney, in 1977.

Her son and daughter-in-law, M. Shawn and Sharon Rooney, told me about Schultz's tribute, a letter to the editor from the March 20 Johnsonburg Press. Shawn's cousin, Inda O'Connell, sent him the newspaper clipping.

Shawn, the retired owner of Niagara Plastics, and my late husband Pat became friends when Pat worked at the Manufacturer & Business Association. I remember the Rooneys for their kindness to my family after Pat died.

Schultz reminisced about the years when Miss Powell taught grades one through seven at Glen Hazel/Pumpkin Hill School.

Shawn's mom was the first woman to drive in Wilcox, near St. Marys. "She was one of the early liberated women," he says.

But it wasn't easy to drive to her school, about 7 miles from Wilcox. The road was so bad that motorists would abandon their cars, head to a farm and borrow a horse to pull their vehicles out of the mud, Schultz wrote. On those occasions, however, Miss Powell would take the school bus, he wrote.

The teacher would accompany her students to explore outside during their lunch breaks. "Springtime was always special," he wrote. "She allowed the boys to fish during lunchtime and she always had some type of activities planned for the girls. I don't know how she juggled her time that allowed her to give so much attention to each child of such wide and varying needs."

After living in a small burg and helping out with her young siblings, Miss Powell was eager to see the world. During World War II, she worked as a naval bombsight inspector.

After marrying and moving to Erie, she returned to college in 1960. Once she retired, she traveled the world; her favorite destination was Turkey.

Sharon Rooney, a longtime volunteer with literacy programs and Hooked on Books, says she appreciates Schultz's letter because it captures history. "It's good to reflect back on how things change."

In his eulogy for his mother, Shawn said that "he thought teaching was the noblest profession," says Sharon.

Mike Schultz thought so; he became a teacher. "Miss Powell gave me a gift that keeps on giving -- the joy of learning," he wrote.